Workers Solidarity Movement

Thomas Cooke workers refused to go quietly when they were tossed onto the dole. Cooks had made £400m profit in 2008 and their boss, Manny Fontela-Novoa, took home €7 million. This was not a failing business.

John Fleming, the west Cork businessman who began his career making sheds and ended up owing the banks €1 billion – the tab for which we will be picking up, no doubt – is a great example of how the other half is dealing with the recession. Whereas you and I have to pinch and scrape, John Fleming can still call on plenty of spare coins – despite his massive debt.

The report into the Leas Cross Nursing home scandal was a shocker. Elderly patients were dying in unexplained circumstances; others had open and infected sores which were left untreated; others still were being restrained and held against their wishes. Odd though isn’t it, given the uproar about what went on there, that so little attention was focused on the businessman who ran Leas Cross. There’s a reason for that.

Dublin football fans will want to forget the August Bank Holiday weekend as the Dubs failed to perform in Croke Park against the might of the Kingdom. But one group of Dublin workers are unlikely to forget the 5 days from Friday 31st July to Tuesday 4th August. When the workers in the Thomas Cook office at the top of Grafton Street in Dublin’s city centre went to work as usual on the Friday morning little did they realise that before going home again they would spend 3 days and (almost) 4 nights in occupation of their workplace, that they would be hauled off at 5a.m. in the morning of the 4th night by a force of 80 – 100 gardai who blocked off the street and battered in the door as if they were on the trail of a dangerous terrorist group, and that they would spend several hours held in the Bridewell Garda station before finally being released by the High Court and allowed to go home.

Several hundred protestors chanting ‘Scabs out. Dockers In’ engaged in a mass trespass on the premises of Marine Terminals Ltd. in Dublin’s docklands yesterday morning (24th August).

Unlike most literature on the ‘conflict’ in the North, this book assesses the impact and effectiveness of the armed struggle. It devotes significant attention towards the motivations of men and women who joined the IRA and the rigid hierarchal structures which underpinned the organisation to explaining the eventual outcome and ineffectiveness of the armed struggle.

It’s the time of year where we plebs get a chance to rectify our impertinence in rejecting the Lisbon Treaty. In itself, rerunning the referendum is hardly an affront to democracy. After all, people are simply being asked to confirm the decision made.

When a force of 80 – 100 gardai arrived at the Thomas Cooke office in Grafton Street Dublin at 5a.m. on Tuesday 4th August, smashed the door down, and dragged 28 protesting workers off to the Bridewell Garda Station, the Irish state was attempting to deliver a strong message to all workers.

A day of fun, talk, food and drink at the great outdoors for Anarchist and friends.

In a bid to close its outlets in Ireland, the Thomas Cook travel agents has begun by attempting to sack 44 workers at its two offices located on North Earl St. and Grafton St. in Dublin’s city centre.